A Guide to Black Flag’s “TV Party”
Of all the television shows mentioned in the two versions of Black Flag’s song “TV Party”, only one, Saturday Night Live, remains on the air in its original form. The other long-running show, Monday Night Football, changed networks in 2006, and while it is much the same show, technically the chain was broken. Other than those, the last hold-out was “Dallas” which went off the air in 1991.
Video: TV Party
The original version of the song, was released as part of their masterwork Damaged. This was followed up some months later by a new version recorded for the TV Party EP. Together they called out the following shows:
- That’s Incredible!
- Hill Street Blues
- Dallas
- Fridays
- Quincy
- Saturday Night Live
- Monday Night Football
- The Jeffersons (LP version only)
- Vega$ (LP version only)
- Dynasty (EP version only)
When the song was re-recorded for the EP, two shows were dropped, “The Jeffersons” and “Vega$” and replaced with “Dynasty”. “Vega$” had already been canceled at the time of the original recording which perhaps had something to do with it. “Fridays” was gone before the EP was released.
Click on the diagram for more detail
The diagram shown above was made using Timeline part of MIT’s SIMILE project. It is perhaps the definitive overview of TV Party and its place in television history. I’m sure if this song was recast for this decade, blogs and such would probably be the focus, the irony of which is not lost on me.